I have a bit of regret about my professional career.
While I’ve been working as a software developer for more than a decade, I was mostly doing proprietary/commercial software development full-time, and open source software development was more likely a hobby. I have convinced myself that it would be the only way to pay my bills, but I knew it wouldn’t.
I’m not saying that proprietary/commercial software development is bad, but I’d like to have more balanced life regarding the two world.
There are 2 reasons;
First, I’ve been building some proprietary applications atop of open source software and not giving back much. The entire industry is kind of doing that for years, and I’m not a big fan of that.
Second, I want to have something that I can point and say “this is my work”. I probably can become a good software developer by doing what I’ve been doing, but I cannot become a great one. Great like Matz, Tim Bray or Mike Bostock.
Squeezing them into my spare time didn’t work. So, I need to try something different.